Taeric

In the last 48 hours, we have caught five instances of serious rep abuse. The use of the reputation system is governed by the Terms of Service and Forum Rules and detailed further in the Reputation Defined thread. Giving numerous reps to one member over a short period of time, exchanging reps for the sake of raising rep counts, and asking for reps, particularly for the sake of gaining access to the For Sale and Wanted forums are all violations of these rules. Members who receive illicit reps, particularly in large quantities, should report the rep abuse to the staff. If violations are found, all affected reps will be removed, and warnings or infractions will be issued. Particularly egregious violations will result in an immediate ban.

We don't have the time, manpower, or really interest in tracking down individual reps that are a bit off color, but the instances in the last couple of days have been pretty serious. One member was taken from 3 reps to 36 all by one other member and posted Sale and Wanted threads. Another member left 26 reps for 26 different members, all with the message of essentially "here's a rep, rep me back". These are the types of things that will receive serious attention, though lesser abuse is still subject to the forum rules.

In short, if you give reps as a "thank you" for quality contributions that other members make on the forum, everything will be good.

Edit: Just to reinforce what I posted below, we're not going to change the rep system or limit the ability of anyone to give reps. We just ask that people use the system as it is intended and report abuse when then notice it.

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Marin

So if we get a rep that says something like "rep me back" we should report it, right?

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wolf_08

Maybe we should have a delay time in seconds for every rep, or stop the same person with the same IP from reping more than once in a given time.

IcedEarth

Holy hell, I never actually thought people would be stupid enough to do such things.

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British Overclockers Club

Marin

That might work. But I have given two reps to the same person in less than a minute when both of their posts were extremely helpful. (charts, links, advice, etc...)

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Retrospekt

Well there is already a restriction that you must rep someone else before you rep the same person, but maybe something more is needed.

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Refresh

Maybe we should only allow people with over 15 rep to give rep.

iampoor

Abuse is going to happen one way or anthoer

There are only so many restrictions you can put on..and people will still break the rules..

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SerenityKill3r

I think we should make it 35 rep requirement to give rep. This will stop people from creating a second account and repping themselves so they can sell stuff. It isnt that hard to get rep, I got about 25-30 in the last couple of weeks

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Taeric

There's no plans to change the rep system. The various features have been set just as we'd like them.

Again, we're not looking to crack down on every single rep, but if you get something that seems off or especially if a whole bunch of reps show up in your account for no apparent reason, it's a good idea to let us know. There's nothing wrong on your part for getting a odd rep here or there, but things look really fishy when 30 reps show up and someone claims they either didn't notice or didn't have a role in it.

Did I mention the three members who exchanged 10+ reps each all from the same computer two nights ago? Those are really the kinds of things that are a real problem.

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